Here we are to introduce some of the best WordPress plugins that are totally necessary and essential for maintaining your website functionality and performance.
It doesn't matter if you are a professional developer or a normal user who is building your own website, you can't deny the use of plugins in building a website.
It doesn't matter how much custom coding you are using on your website, you will need plugins eventually.
Although we can say that using too many plugins will make your website run slower, using practical plugins will help you build a well-functioning website even if you don't have coding skills at all.
Top Best WordPress Plugins Essential For Your Website
In this article, we made a list of the best and the most practical WordPress plugins you will need in different areas for building a website.
Best WordPress SEO Plugin: Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a search engine optimization plugin for WordPress with over 5 million installations all around the world.
Yoast is the best SEO plugin because it is created by professionals, so this plugin will take care of the most settings and you should only focus on creating content and structuring those contents.
Key Features
- Creating XML sitemaps to inform search engines of its existence
- Page analysis checks (like the length of the posts)
- Creating better content with snippet preview
- Meta & Link (power to determine which page should show in search results)
- Multi-site compatibility
- Social media integration
- Breadcrumbs (for navigating users and search engines)
Alternatives
- All in one SEO
- SEO framework
- SE Ranking
- Rank Math
Best WordPress Page Builder Plugin: Elementor
It’s about time for a live page builder, with no limits of design. A page builder that delivers high-end page designs and advanced capabilities, never before seen on WordPress.
Elementor is the leading WordPress page builder plugin with over 1,000,000 installations. It is a simple, powerful and flexible page builder with a great visual design.
Experience fast page loads and speed in performance with all in one solution. These features along with other important features made Elementor one of the best in its kind.
Key Features
- Fastest drag & drop and intuitive editor
- Step by step video tutorials
- Translated into over 50 languages
- Over 300 beautiful templates
- Dozens of widgets to choose from
- 24/7 support and many features in the Pro version
Alternatives
- Divi builder
- WP-Bakery
- King Composer
- Brizy
Best WordPress Slider Plugin: Smart Slider 3
Smart Slider 3 is the most powerful and intuitive WordPress plugin to create sliders which was never possible before. Fully responsive, SEO optimized and works with any WordPress theme. Create beautiful sliders and tell stories without any code.
Smart Slider 3 is currently the most popular slider plugin in the official WordPress repository. It has 500.000 active installs and 5-star ratings. You can build your slider easily with the drag and drop editor, also you can import a predesigned template from the Slider library.
A slider can be a good design element that you can use in any part of your page. It can be a great header, but you can use it in your post to display images. But you are not limited to use images, you can choose from more layers such as a heading, text or a CTA button, you can also create video sliders. You can publish your slider in many ways and Smart Slider 3 works with the most popular page builders, too.
Key Features
- Totally responsive
- SEO friendly
- User-friendly slide editor
- Slider and Slide library, ready to use designs
- Layers for adding content
- Dynamic generators like WordPress post slider where the content can
automatically refresh.
Alternatives
- Slider Revolution
- Layer Slider
- MaxSlider
Best WordPress Contact Form Creator Plugin: Contact form 7
Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on.
Contact form 7 is a form creator plugin for WordPress that can manage and customize multiple contact forms and is installed over 5,000,000 by users.
Also, the created form supports the submitting base on AJAX, CAPTCHA, and spam filtering. It is one of the best contact form creators because of its ease of use and ability to adjust the available forms. The interface of this plugin is based on HTML tags and sometimes you should change the codes manually to get what you need.
Key Features
- Standard contact form
- Old but functional
- Simple, fast, free and effective
- Good selection of field types
- Fairly straightforward interface
- Unlimited number of forms
Alternatives
- WP-Forms
- Jetpack
- Ninja Forms
Best WordPress Multilingual Translation Plugin: WPML
WPML is a plugin for WordPress. Simply put, plugins extend the functionality of the basic WordPress CMS. In our case, WPML makes WordPress run multilingual.
WPML is the most downloaded multilingual WordPress plugin with over 600,000 downloads for websites all around the world. It allows WordPress to run multilingual.
It is a very important WordPress plugin because the author can write the contents in different languages and translate those contents to even other languages, Therefore you should consider this WordPress plugin for your website because it is one of the best and very handy ones.
Key Features
- Powerful Translation Management
- Theme and plugin text translation
- Reliable support
- Works with most WordPress themes
- Easy to run with one WordPress installation
- Easily send the translation to integrated translation services.
Alternatives
- Weglot
- GTranslate
- TranslatePress
- Polylang
You might wanna check this full comprehensive article on best WordPress translation plugins: 10+ Best WordPress Translation Plugins
Best WordPress E-Commerce Plugin: WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a flexible, open-source eCommerce solution built on WordPress. Whether you’re launching a business, taking an existing brick and mortar store online, or designing sites for clients you can get started quickly and build exactly the store you want.
WooComerce is the best open-source plugin for online shops. It is very popular because it can answer to your needs from small online businesses to large-sized ones.
WooComerce is very simple and easy to install and customize, and also tightly safe and secure because of the dedicated team of developers and volunteers (It is an open-source plugin.). We can say that there is no actual competitor for WooCommerce in WordPress and if you want to use something else as your shop maker other than this one, you have to look for other CMS.
Key Features
- Modern and clean interface
- Improved experience for store owners
- Full control of check out process
- Ability to set the default currency
- Geo-location Support
- Page load reduction
- Inventory Management
- Shipping Calculations
- SEO optimized
- Discount Coupons and codes
- Reporting
Alternatives
- Squarespace Online Stores
- Shopify
- WixStores
- Magento
- MonsterCommerce
Best WordPress Event Calendar & Booking Plugin: Modern Events Calendar
Modern Events Calendar is a responsive, mobile-friendly, FREE, and comprehensive events management plugin which is extremely user-friendly and well-designed for displaying the events calendar on the websites, ever easier.
You can manage your events with Modern Events Calendar (MEC) very easy, fast and in a modern way.
MEC is one of the best event calendar plugins of WordPress since it is too fast with simplicity and no need to worry about migrating and transferring your current data from another event calendar plugin. You need only a few clicks and a couple of seconds to import data automatically with full details.
Key Features
- Ability to create all day events
- Advanced event locations system
- The advanced event organizer system
- Ability to tag events
- Event countdown
- Event custom link page
- Dynamic event labels
- RTL support
- Different kinds of view (list view, grid view, agenda view, map view…)
Alternatives
- All-in-One Event Calendar
- My Calendar
- EventON
- Calendarize It!
- The Events Calendar
Best WordPress Sitemap Generator Plugin: Google XML Sitemaps
Use this plugin to greatly improve SEO to create special XML sitemaps which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your site.
Google XML Sitemap is an open-source software which will help search engines like Google, Bing and etc to index your website.
It has several easy options to build a sitemap. Google XML Sitemap will improve your websites SEO for creating sitemaps to grow your business.
Users rated this plugin 5 out 5 stars and it has been downloaded over 10 million times, then as you see it is absolutely one of the best plugins of the current this field.
Key Features
- Yoast SEO sitemap
- All in One SEO Pack
Alternatives
- XML Sitemap & Google News
- Simple Sitemap
- Sitemap by BestWebSoft
- Companion Sitemap Generator
Best WordPress Schema Mark-up Generator Plugin: Schema Pro
Creating a schema markup is no longer a task! With a simple click and select interface you can set up a markup in minutes. All the markup configurations you will set are automatically applied to all selected pages & posts.
Schema Pro is created by the same developers which bring to you All in One Schema Rich Snippets plugin.
It is a fast and easy method to automate schema markup which is made by Brainstorm Force.
We pick this plugin as the best schema mark up plugin because with this plugin all the configurations will apply automatically to pages and posts. In addition by a clean and minimalist code, this plugin tries to meet Google guidelines.
Key Features
- Add proper JSON-LD schema markup to your site, in a unique way.
- No need to display an extra review box
- Simple interface with flexibility
- Helpful setup wizard
- 13 different schema types
- Ability to include/exclude post/pages/contents
- Custom fields
Alternatives
- Schema and Structured Data for WP & AMP
- WP SEO Structured data Schema
- All in one Schema Rich Snippets
Best WordPress Anti Spammer Plugin: Akismet Anti-Spam
Akismet checks your comments and contact form submissions against our global database of spam to prevent your site from publishing malicious content. You can review the comment spam it catches on your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.
When you first install the WordPress, Akismet plugin comes with it by default but not activated.
Akismet is a spam filtering and one of the must-have WordPress plugin which learns from its mistakes with a specific algorithm and helps you to save time by focusing energy on real users comments.
Only 15 comments out of every 100 comments are legitimate, so Akismet helps to block future spammers.
Key Features
- Free spam protection
- Integration to top WordPress plugins
- A great rate of spam caught every hour.
- Time-saving
Alternatives
- WangGuard
- Anti-Spam
- Bee
- WordPress Zero Spam
- WPBruiser
Best WordPress Cache, Speed & Performance Plugin: W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the SEO and user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices.
W3 Total Cache is an example of web performance optimization plugins which is trusted by millions of website publishers.
W3 improves the SEO and UX of the website by increasing website performance and reducing loading time via features like CDN (content delivery network).
Key Features
- Transparent content delivery network (CDN) management
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) support
- Secure SSL support
- Cache-busting
- Nonblocking JavaScript embeds
- Various security features
Alternatives
- Swift Performance
- WP Super Cache
- WP Rocket
- Hyper Cache
- Cachify
Best WordPress E-mail Marketing Plugin: MC4WP – Mailchimp for WordPress
MC4WP helps you grow your Mailchimp lists and write better newsletters through various methods. You can create good looking opt-in forms or integrate with any existing form on your site, like your comment, contact or checkout form.
MailChimp is a full free marketing automation plugin and an email marketing service.
Numbers about this plugin show us the importance of applying this plugin for our targets. It works with over 300 application and services, helps millions of customers over 175 countries in the world and sends 6 billion emails a week for free.
MailChimp has a simple slogan “It’s easy to get started, and it’s free. Two things everyone loves.”
With this plugin, you can become the brand you always want to be. Apply this plugin to feel the very best features for free in WordPress e-mail marketing.
Key Features
- Create unique campaigns
- Connect your favorite tools
- Automate your busy work
- Optimize all your efforts
Alternatives
- Robly
- AWeber
- GetResponse
Best WordPress Gutenberg Booster Plugin: ZeGuten
ZeGuten is the plugin for native WordPress blocks editor Gutenberg. Makes creating content super easy for everyone, from beginners to experienced developers. Use animated effects, structurize content, apply custom backgrounds, and showcase publications like a pro with simple WordPress blocks!
Take a glance at ZeGuten plugin – a starter pack of 11 blocks for any purpose, from blurbs and banners, to progress bar and countdown timer.
This plugin is aimed to expand the potentialities of the native WordPress Gutenberg editor and has a bunch of tools.
With ZeGuten blocks, you can arrange posts of your blog into a listing, grid, masonry or chess layout, and also add posts carousels, which makes ZeGuten a real treasure for any blogger.
Key Features
- 5 various posts layouts to choose from;
- responsive columns;
- flexible width and height;
- responsive gaps, paddings, and margins;
- stylish backgrounds, including video and gradient;
- image overlay and custom shapes.
Alternatives
- Gutenberg Blocks – Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg
- Page Builder Gutenberg Blocks – CoBlocks
- Gutenberg Blocks and Template Library by Otter
- Atomic Blocks – Gutenberg Blocks Collection
Best WordPress Cookie Consent Plugin: GDPR Cookie Consent
GDPR Cookie Consent when installed and activated will add a banner that can be seen across the website until visitors act upon it. The banner can be used to inform the user about the use of cookies and prompt them to take explicit and informed action (accept, reject, or partially accept).
This is a great plugin for cookie consent with 1000000+ active installations.
The plugin is packed with features that include adding a banner to your website that can be customized to look as part of your website, automatic blocking of the cookies, scanning cookies on the website automatically, Giving granular control to the users, location-based exclusion of cookies, log the consent of the users, etc.
Key Features
- Enables a notice with Accept and Reject options;
- Admin can configure cookie details and their description from the backend;
- Adds a subtle cookie banner to your website;
- You can fully customize the cookie notice style so it blends with your existing website;
- You can choose to make the cookie notice bar disappear after a few seconds;
- Cookie Audit module.
Alternatives
- Cookie Notice for GDPR & CCPA
- Cookii – Free GDPR Cookie Consent
- EU Cookie Law for GDPR/CCPA
- WP Cookie Notice for GDPR
Best WordPress Gutenberg Editor Blocks Library Plugin: Responsive Block Editor Addons
Unleash your creativity with the Responsive Block Editor Addons Gutenberg blocks library. Within minutes create modern responsive designs for all devices. Use reusable block page templates to kickstart your website in no time.
Unleash your creativity with the advanced Gutenberg editor blocks library. Within minutes create modern responsive designs for all devices. Use reusable block page templates to kickstart your website in no time.
Easily choose your favorite templates to launch your websites in no time. You can also pick any of the advanced blocks with completely customizable settings to make your own creative templates.
With more than 25+ creative blocks for Gutenberg you can design beautiful pages without writing a single line of code. The settings are easy to customize your own unique look.
Key Features
- modern responsive designs for all devices
- reusable block page templates
- completely customizable settings
- 25+ creative blocks for Gutenberg
Alternatives
- Gutenberg Blocks – Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg
- Kadence Blocks
- Advanced Gutenberg by PublishPress
- Ultimate Blocks
- Atomic Blocks – Gutenberg Blocks Collection
Conclusion
In this article, we have reviewed some of the best WordPress plugins or in other words, these “must-have” WordPress plugins which can be useful for publishers, users, and customers.
From SEO field plugins to email marketing plugins, base on your needs and the target you want to reach, you can choose from some of them or all of them.
Keep in mind these plugins are the leading plugins in their fields based on valid and legitimate numbers and statistics.
By using them, add both functionality and features to your websites.